


Humoresque

by Lafayette1777



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Clint is divorced, Hanukkah, M/M, Pietro isn't dead, Sweaters, and Holidays, there is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 09:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5737750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Life and death both seem to have their fair share of stagnation.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humoresque

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how I ended up here but apparently robots and shit give me angst

Time is slow, this city is slow, Clint Barton is slow. Pietro is coming to realize that slowness is not always something to fear. 

Wanda’s arm, linked with his, is enough to anchor him to her meandering pace. Surely, she can feel him twitch impatiently in her grip, but they seem to have wordlessly agreed this outing to be an exercise in self control - something that Pietro, notably, has always lacked. In the swarm of people making their way up Fifth Avenue, Pietro has to remind himself, periodically, that this is a crowd of shoppers, not refugees; the buzz in the air is happiness, not urgency. There is no reason to run.

Wanda pauses to contemplate the menu of a Chinese restaurant, but Pietro quickly loses interest and lets his eyes roam the street and the buildings stretching above him. With twilight closing in, lights are beginning to prickle on, illuminating the scenes behind curtains and around houseplants. His eyes scan and observe in a way that he thinks might make Barton proud, though Pietro would instruct him to fuck off if Clint ever tried for such a condescending praise. 

When his gaze lands on a windowsill up and to his left, he freezes. 

Wanda must feel him tense; her focus breaks quickly from contemplating the side dish options and her head swivels until she locates the root of his discomfort. 

The glowing, half-lit menorah in the window. 

“Do you remember--” he begins, voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes, I do.” And he’s glad, that she cuts him off. He didn’t really want to say the words, to voice the memories. The thought needed, inevitably, to be acknowledged, but the words exist in a category between said and unsaid. Understood and forgotten. 

And, in truth, they’ve always been beyond words when it comes to each other.

Still, though, the words come - his mother calling the candelabra a _hanukkiyah_ , his father using the _shamash_ to light a candle each night. _Sufganiyot_ for desert. _Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tsivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah._ The blessings come rushing back in his mother’s voice, like they do in dreams, and for a moment he can’t breathe. 

“I’ll make you a sweater,” he says abruptly, breath pluming white in the cold air. It comes out in Sokovian. “Like mo--like she used to.”

When they meet eyes, Wanda is surprised but, still, she smiles. “Okay,” she murmurs, and begins to lead him forward again. He cranes his neck for one last look at the menorah; sees a dining table and the silhouettes of people in the background. A languid evening - slow, maybe. 

“Clint invited us to spend the holidays with his family,” Wanda breaks into his thoughts, as they trot downwards to the subway. “It’s nice of him to not want us to be alone.”

Pietro doesn’t look at her. There’s almost a tease in her voice; she _knows_ , of course, but he’s not in the mood to contemplate that mess of a situation at the moment. Instead, he murmurs, “It won’t be like it was.”

“Well, nothing is. Not really.” She looks at him over the turnstile, and a passing train sends tendrils of hair wrapping around her features like octopus tentacles. “Hasn’t been for a while,” she adds, switching to Sokovian for emphasis.

He falls into sullen silence on the cluttered train. Their first year as Avengers, he realizes, is coming to a close - and yet, still, he feels stagnant, as if they’re still children of war, as if the pain of his own death, however temporary it may have been, has reawakened the pain of his parents’ death as well. Everything is new and yet he’s back to square one. 

“You _want_ to go to Barton’s for Christmas?” he asks, once they’re back on the sidewalk and the tower is within sight. 

Wanda is silent for a few long moments - gauging his reaction, maybe. Clint is a subject she seems endlessly amused by; in part, perhaps, because Pietro devolves into noncommittal grunts whenever it arises. Now, though, the impatient shake in his hands muddles the subject even further - Barton is the only thing that doesn’t fit in with any past figure. He is the only new territory Pietro can acknowledge as being dynamic, and therefore unknown. 

“We can light our own menorah this week,” Wanda implores, after a while. “And I’m sure he won’t mind next weekend if I wear this Hanukkah sweater you’re planning on knitting.”

Pietro nods, stiffly, and it’s decided: he will endure Clint Barton, and the mess that is any time the two of them share the same room, for Wanda. As always. 

And, for the sake of something new. 

 

 

_He remembers waking up to bright white, to Wanda’s tears, to some half-listened to explanation of a miraculously regenerative metabolism. The_ how _of his resurrection feels irrelevant, in a world where aliens invade and robots lift cities into the sky._ Why, _of course, is the next question, but he’s probably not prepared to answer that, or have it answered for him._

 _Wanda pulls him into a half hysterical embrace, and Clint Barton, unshaved and sleep deprived, rises to his feet and says, “You’re an absolute fucking idiot and I will_ never _forgive you.”_

 _Barton turns on his heel, then, and storms out, but not before Pietro notices the blanket over the chair in the corner, and the evidence that_ someone _has spent considerable time camped out. Waiting. Most of Pietro’s body feels tight and painful, and he’s tired on a level deeper than he ever has been before, but he’s smiling._

 _He’s fought his way back from the dead and, still, Clint Barton is making him smile._

 

 

He finds a yarn that catches his fancy in an uptown craft store, but still jogs to Buffalo to see if he can get a better price, more out of habit than actual demonstrated need. By the Tuesday before Christmas he’s watched enough Youtube videos to pretend as if he knows what he’s doing, and by Wednesday he’s only had to unravel the entire project twice in order to fix mistakes. Now, his hands work on autopilot, blurring in impossibly fast patterns until the needles grow warm with the friction. He finds that he likes knitting; it channels some of the kinetic energy in his body into only his hands, and allows him to sit mostly still in front of a movie or a meal or a weapons demonstration. He waits, impassively, for the snark to roll in, but instead his obvious emotional investment in the task seems to keep the more barbed-wire tongued Avengers at bay. Or, maybe, he still reeks enough of death to banish levity even among the buoyant.

Pietro almost can’t blame them for modifying their behavior; he, too, is living in a reality of altered perceptions. This is the nature of the aftermath, but at least here he seems to be able to set the terms of his own post-death life.

Mostly, this means the team avoids him outside of actual work. With the exception of Clint, that is. 

Pietro has spent most of the holiday week ignoring the cheer of the common rooms in the tower, and has hunkered down in his bunk to watch TV and knit. He enjoys having the full spread of American TV to partake in, even if he does feel the absence of Sokovian subtitles - if his mind wanders for a moment then he loses track of the English and is at a loss for the next few lines of dialogue. It’s a problem he’s got a feeling Clint would understand, if the signs he exchanges with Natasha are any indication. 

Clint appears, then, as if simply the thought was enough to summon him. His sharp eyes take in the sitcom on the television and the way Pietro is hunched over a ball of golden yarn. 

“What?” Pietro says, and it doesn’t come out nearly as belligerent as he intends. 

Barton’s expression betrays nothing. “Wanda said you guys would, and I quote, ‘be delighted to spend Christmas with the Best and Most Handsome Avenger of all time.’”

Pietro looks up from the needles in his lap to raise one unimpressed eyebrow. “Really.”

“Really.”

“Then I guess that is what we are doing.”

Clint has settled into a sitting position at the foot of Pietro’s bed, eyes latching onto the TV. “I guess so.”

“This won’t be awkward for you?” Pietro asks. 

“Oh, I’m sure it will be.” Despite his wry grin, there’s still something tense in Barton’s expression. Pietro contemplates whether to ignore it or not. “Just try not to grab my ass in front of my ex-wife, will you?”

“No promises,” Pietro drawls, turning his gaze back to his hands. Still, though, he catches a glimpse of Clint’s smile, and hears the crackling, half-nervous laugh that follows. 

 

 

_“I named my son after you.”_

_“This is awkward.”_

_What follows is something so passionate it’s almost angry; a kiss of near lethal intensity. For a moment, Pietro is incapable of rational thought - he’s kissing back before he can ascertain whether this is the dream or the reality. Before he can even take note of the fact that Clint, it seems, has forgiven him for playing the hero. Or something._

_Pietro’s back slams against the wall and, just for a moment, he can think clearly again._

_“Don’t you have a wife…?” he manages, hoping vaguely that it comes out in semi-coherent English. Clint’s lips brush against his neck and Pietro swallows back something that feels suspiciously like a moan._

_“Don’t speak,” Barton growls, his head already dipping lower._

_This is not how he expected this evening to go. Not even, really, what he expected after Clint had pulled him into a dark corner and made jarring eye contact. Granted, though, the unexpected is kind of his thing now - he_ is _two weeks back from the dead. And Clint, finally, is no longer avoiding him like the plague. Like death itself._

 _Pietro reaches a hand up to get a grip on Clint’s hair and decides, rather impulsively, that this might not be the time for contemplation. He has no problem with late night trysts, especially if they’re a distraction from staring at the ceiling and contemplating the space between darkness and light, life and death. The_ why _behind his resurrection. Clint, perhaps, is looking for the same fix._

_So be it._

 

 

Wanda’s sweater, in all honesty, is kind of lovely. He’d chosen a light blue for the Star of David on the front and a coarse, golden fiber for the rest. It shimmers slightly from where it hangs off her small frame. Climbing into the Quinjet, Clint had looked at it for one long moment, then let his gaze slide over to where Pietro waited impatiently for some sort of witty one-liner. All that came, though, was a strangely soft smile, tender-eyed and lingering. 

Now, Pietro paces the body of the jet as Wanda hums to herself and a river of green passes below them. With each turn, Pietro catches a glimpse of Barton’s silhouette in the pilot’s chair - the carefully tousled hair, the flannel rolled up to the elbow. Despite the casual garb, he’s not relaxed. That much would be abundantly obvious even if Pietro didn’t know what a truly unwound Clint looked like, stretched across crinkled sheets and half bathed in evening light.

They land with a jolt Pietro hardly feels. 

Clint is slow to climb out of his chair, and Pietro tries not to visibly vibrate while he watches the other man fiddle with the seatbelt and then the hem of his shirt. He’s aware of Wanda watching the two of them with an air of bemusement, taking in Clint’s lethargy and Pietro’s obvious impatience. Finally, Barton looks up, and aims a pointed glare in Pietro’s direction. 

“Right then,” he says, heading for the cargo door. “Don’t embarrass me any more than you’ve already planned to.”

“I would _never_ ,” Wanda retorts, lifting one hand to cover her mouth in mock offense. 

“I probably will,” Pietro admits, with an insouciant shrug. 

Clint lets Wanda march ahead toward the house before falling in next to Pietro and bestowing the younger man’s hip with a quick, ambiguous squeeze. “I know,” he murmurs, with smirking eyes, and then brushes ahead to greet his children. 

 

 

_“I don’t want you to feel as if you owe me something.”_

_“Well, I do, but that’s not why I’m here.” Clint follows this with a withering look, as if his motives should be obvious. As if the situation they’ve landed themselves in has no obfuscated meaning whatsoever. Pietro wonders if he’s confused simply because he was recently dead, or if this really is as impossible as it seems._

_Currently, they’re sprawled across Pietro’s bunk, still halfway entangled. The lights are off, but Clint’s profile is illuminated by the hallway security lighting leaking in from under the door. Pietro, lying on his side, watches the bob of Barton’s adam apple with something between reverence and unease._

_“Wanda said you brought my body back,” Pietro says, abruptly, because the moment was too beautiful not to destroy._

_Clint pauses in his contemplation of the ceiling, slowly letting his head swivel until he’s eyeing Pietro across the pillows. Very, very quietly, he replies, “Of course I did.”_

_“Then we are even,” Pietro declares, letting a lone finger drag along the curve of Clint’s bicep. “I saved you and you saved me.”_

_He shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”_

_After a few moments of making stubborn eye contact, Clint is the first to break away. His gaze drifts toward where their feet are lost in the darkness at the end of the bed. “You really don’t remember anything, after being shot? You were out for a solid fortnight. Properly gone for a couple days, too.”_

_Pietro is glad Clint isn’t looking at his face in this moment, because he has a feeling that he’s wearing an expression he’d never be able to take back. Wanda had asked too, initially, but when they’d met eyes she’d retracted the question so quickly he’d thought he might have imagined it. He has an answer, but he doesn’t want it. It’s not something he should know. It’s wrongness permeates him with every breath he takes in this second life. This second life that, sometimes, is so much like the first._

_If he thinks about it, then death itself is not all that different from waiting for death, trapped under the rubble of an apartment block, expecting a shell to explode. They’re both unbearably slow._

_And stagnancy has never been something he’s handled particularly well._

_“I don’t remember anything,” he lies, voice barely a whisper. Clint’s eyes swerve back to him, and then a hand is cupping his face and their lips are together and he is reminded, then, that answering too fast is the easiest way to uproot the authenticity of a lie._

 

 

“Your life is a disaster.”

It’s Christmas Eve, and Pietro is fucking freezing but the back stoop over looking the winter vista before them is still better than inside, where the air has grown tense. The pretense of forced normalcy among the newly divorced had gone to bed at the same time as the kids, and in its place is something thick and awkward and all together very much like the stereotypical holiday season. Pietro had slipped out the back door intending, perhaps, to run a few laps around the property, but had instead ended up taking a heavy seat on the bottom stair and shivering. 

Clint Barton’s life had seemed disgustingly, superfluously perfect in daylight, as if all the sanguinity Pietro had missed in his childhood had washed up here in some freak accident. But, now, with moon out and the snow turning the landscape barren and--

“Well, it’s your fault. You saved it.” Clint has sat down beside him, wrapped in a quilt Pietro had last seen on the back of the sofa. A moment passes and then they’re both wrapped in it, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh. Clint’s breath is white against the black of the treeline. 

“My mistake,” Pietro sighs, placing a hand over Clint’s knee and allowing the smile in Clint’s eyes to spread to his own. He glances back at the house, catches sight of Wanda offering to help with the dishes and Laura’s subsequent dismissal. She doesn’t look out the kitchen window; doesn’t see Clint rest his head against Pietro’s shoulder wearily.

He knows that Clint had already been divorced before Sokovia, before Pietro came back from the other side, long before Pietro had any idea that his lips were soft and persistent and first two fingers of his right hand were calloused from pulling back a bowstring. So maybe it’s egotistical. Egotistical, to think that Pietro has had any influence at all on Clint’s life beyond sacrificing his own for it. It bothers him, though. The thought that he’s had any role in the deconstruction of the household behind him. That he’s been granted a second life and so far it seems he managed only to fuck up someone else’s.

“I’m really, really glad you’re here,” Barton says, after a long while. He sounds so unexpectedly earnest that Pietro shifts to look at him. For one strange moment, he doesn’t breathe, and just looks. 

“I’ll make you a sweater,” he expels, finally, and Clint lifts one surprised eyebrow at him. 

“Like Wanda’s?”

“Yes. If you want.” Pietro is thankful that he’s cold enough not to blush.

“Cool.” Clint’s eyes are on him, dipping from his eyes to his lips until finally he snakes one arm out from under the blanket and uses it to cup Pietro’s chin. Then they’re kissing, cold mouths and warm breaths. It’s a little a surreal, and Pietro is very, very alive. 

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Clint breaks away with a shaky breath, motioning fondly between them and cracking a half-smile at the way Pietro is vibrating slightly. 

“Probably,” Pietro affirms, and pulls Clint in on the hope that, in the end, they will both be unraveled.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
